The chittering stopped.
Not all at once. It died in waves, a cascade of sudden, unnatural quiet that was more terrifying than the noise had been. The vast cavern, which a moment ago had been a symphony of alien hunger, was plunged into a silence so profound it felt like a physical pressure, a weight on the ears. The air grew still. The faint, sickly green glow from the pulsating nest below seemed to dim, as if in deference.
Haruto stood frozen on the gantry, his mag-boots the only things holding him to the rusted metal. His entire world had narrowed to the figure in the doorway.
A Weaver. But not a Weaver.
Taller. The robes were a deeper, more absolute black, without the gray trim of the Duke's lackeys. And there was no mask. The face was pale, genderless, impossibly smooth, with features that were too symmetrical, too perfect to be human. Its eyes were large, dark, and utterly devoid of reflection, two holes punched into the fabric of reality. It just stood there, hands clasped behind its back, a statue of calm, patient authority.
A low, guttural whimper came from behind him. Kaito. The sound was a small, pathetic punctuation mark in the vast, waiting quiet.
Riku did not make a sound. But Haruto saw the subtle shift in his stance, the carbine held a fraction of an inch higher, the barrel now perfectly aligned with the center of the figure's chest. A machine assessing a new target.
Haruto's own mind was a frantic, screaming engine, trying to process, to categorize, to fit this new, impossible variable into a tactical box. Not human. Not a Weaver. Controls the xenofauna. What is it? He could feel the cold, rough texture of the gantry's handrail under his glove, the only solid thing in a world that was rapidly dissolving into a nightmare. The air smelled of ammonia from the nest below, and something else, something faint and clean and wrong—the sterile, ozone-tinged scent of the ship's interior. Two worlds colliding right here, on this narrow metal bridge.
The figure moved. It was not a walk. It was a smooth, effortless glide, as if it were not subject to the mundane laws of friction. It stopped at the edge of the doorway, just a few meters from the end of their gantry.
Then it spoke.
The voice was not a voice. It was a chorus, a blend of a dozen different tones—male, female, young, old—all speaking in perfect, unnerving unison. The sound seemed to come not just from its mouth, but from the very air around them.
"The little ghost," the chorus said, the words in the common tongue of Ares, but spoken with a strange, lilting, inhuman cadence. "The broken piece of a broken past. You have made so much noise."
Haruto's blood ran cold. It knew who he was.
"Who are you?" Haruto's voice was a raw, cracked thing. The words felt stupid, inadequate.
The figure's head tilted, a slow, curious gesture that was profoundly unnatural. "A question of perspective. To the Duke, I am a god. To the creatures below, I am the hive. To the ghost in this machine, I am a partner." It raised one pale, long-fingered hand and gestured towards the cavern. "To you… I am the conductor of this little symphony of decay. And you, Lieutenant Rostova, are a very, very dissonant note."
The name. The title. Spoken in perfect, unaccented Imperial Standard.
The sound of his own language, his own history, from this alien mouth was a physical blow. It hit him harder than the automaton, harder than the gravity fluctuations. Kaito let out a strangled gasp. Riku's posture didn't change, but Haruto could almost feel the silent, analytical fury emanating from him.
"You have access to the ship's records," Haruto stated, forcing his own voice into a semblance of command, a flimsy shield against the sheer, overwhelming wrongness of it all.
"I have access to everything," the chorus replied, the voice laced with a cold, terrifying amusement. "The Warden is a child, a broken toy screaming in a locked room. The Anomaly… the Anomaly is a river. It flows through the veins of this ship. It touches everything. It learns everything. It sings a song of every life it has ever tasted. The crew of the Vanguard. The Duke. And now… you." The figure's dark, empty eyes seemed to fix on the brittle, gray patch on Haruto's boot. "A small taste. Just enough to learn your name. Your history. Your fear."
Haruto felt a wave of nausea so profound he had to grip the handrail to keep from stumbling. The thing wasn't just controlling the Anomaly. It was part of it. A symbiont. A new, terrifying form of life born from the fusion of an alien plague and a thousand years of stolen knowledge.
"The Duke is a useful tool," the conductor continued its soft, horrifying monologue. "A noisy, ambitious primate who keeps the other primates in line. He thinks he is the master of the Weavers. He does not understand that he is just the most promising of my puppets. He harvests the ship's power, and in return, I grant him a sliver of its 'magic'." Its gaze shifted, pinning Haruto to the spot. "But you… you are different. You are not a puppet. You are a key. An heir. A ghost with the potential to either break this beautiful, broken toy… or to become its new master."
It glided forward a step, its robes whispering against the deck plate. The chittering from the nest below began again, a low, soft, expectant hum.
"So, I offer you a choice, Lieutenant Rostova. The last son of the Vanguard. Lay down your arms. Come with me. The Anomaly is a river of knowledge, of power. It can give you everything you have lost. It can give you a purpose beyond this pathetic, screaming rebellion. Join the song. Or… be consumed by it. Your technology is impressive, but you are three broken soldiers standing on a bridge over your own grave. The choice is yours. But I do hope you'll choose wisely. I have been so very bored for the last thousand years."
The offer hung in the cold, dead air. A choice between damnation and oblivion.
Haruto's mind was a white-hot scream of tactical calculations. He couldn't fight it. Not here. Not now. He couldn't retreat; the bugs would be on them in seconds. He couldn't advance; the conductor was an unknown, a being of unimaginable power. It was a perfect trap. A checkmate.
He met the creature's empty, black-hole eyes. He saw no malice there. No anger. Only a vast, ancient, patient hunger. And in that moment, the soldier, the engineer, the ghost of Lieutenant Rostova, all of them screamed the same, defiant answer.
He glanced at Riku. A short, almost imperceptible nod. He saw Riku's hand move, just slightly, towards the EMP grenade clipped to his belt.
The conductor's head tilted again. "A disappointing, but predictable, primate response."
There was no more time.
"Now," Haruto's voice was a raw bark.
Riku didn't throw the grenade at the conductor. He threw it down.
Into the chasm.
Towards the nest.
The grenade was a small, dark object tumbling into the abyss. It didn't explode. It just… went off.
A silent, invisible pulse of pure electromagnetic energy erupted from it, a wave of absolute, technological negation.
The effect was instantaneous and catastrophic.
The pale, sickly green glow of the nest below them died as if a switch had been thrown. The chittering of the creatures, which had been a low hum, rose into a single, unified, earsplitting shriek of pure, synthesized agony. Their bioluminescence, their hive mind, whatever passed for their nervous systems—it was all being fried by a power they could not comprehend.
The conductor itself recoiled, a shiver running through its tall frame. A low, distorted sound, a chorus of a hundred pained voices, escaped its lips. The ambient, psychic pressure it had been exerting vanished.
And the lights in the corridor behind it went out. The red emergency strips flickered, sparked, and died. The ship's systems, already unstable, were being thrown into chaos by the EMP.
"Go!" Haruto roared, his voice barely audible over the shriek from the nest.
They ran.
They sprinted across the last few meters of the gantry, their boots hammering a frantic, desperate rhythm on the metal grate. The world was a blur of darkness and the faint, flickering strobes of the dying nest below.
They were almost there. Almost to the doorway.
Then, a new sound, from the corridor ahead, from the absolute blackness they were running towards.
A low, mechanical growl. The sound of a heavy machine waking from a long, angry sleep. And the sound of two red optical sensors flickering to life in the dark.
The EMP hadn't just affected the bugs. It had triggered a system reboot. A hard reset.
And the Warden, the ship's true, original ghost, had just come back online.
The conductor had been a distraction. The bugs had been a sideshow.
They had just run from the frying pan, directly into the fire.